Free Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield Page A

before—individual tanks separated from their squadrons, regiments, brigades. Day Seven since the fall of Bir Hacheim, it happens to us. We’re lost. I have two strange tanks and all strange crews; our scratch lot end up with what remains of 4th Armoured Brigade, who have themselves been tossed in with unallied companies of Indian and South African infantry.
    As organisation breaks down across the vast and muddled field, improvisation becomes the order of the day. Proper radio protocol requires tank troop and squadron commanders to communicate only within their own regiment; it’s a court-martial offence to go over or round. Now commanders are poaching on any net they can break into, seeking aid from any allies they can find. Day Nine, retreating to a defensive line thrown together on the Tobruk—El Adem track, I’m tapping on to an artillery net when I hear a familiar voice. “Hell’s bells, is that Chapman from Magdalen?”
    â€œWho’s this?”
    It’s Stein. His two batteries of 25-pounders (or such sections as remain intact and functioning) have somehow thrown in with those elements of our regiment that still cling together. Two nights later, he and I find each other in leaguer, outside Colonel L.’s command truck.
    Stein is a captain now, an acting major. I barely recognise him. A grisly burn-scar paints one side of his face. Shrapnel, another officer tells me, has left one of his knees half-frozen. Stein is cut about but flying high. Captains and lieutenants defer to him; he’s their chief and they love him.
    Something extraordinary is happening. Under the stress of withdrawal and dislocation, with the chain of command cast into anarchy through wounds and deaths, vacuums of leadership have begun to appear. Many commanding officers rise brilliantly to the occasion, but others falter, fail or in effect abdicate. In numerous formations 2/ICs, seconds-in-command, are compelled to step forward. This is the case with Stein. He’s only a captain but he’s running the show of a colonel. He does it so smoothly we barely notice. From his demeanour and the confidence with which he issues orders, not to mention the alacrity with which they are obeyed, I assume his post is battery commander. It takes a night or two before I realise his name isn’t even on the top sheet of the War Establishment. He has simply taken over, or rather been called forth by the moment.
    Stein has always been a brilliant teacher. He employs this faculty now. Earlier in the retreat, when batteries of 25-pounder guns have come under fire, they have simply packed their kit and poodled off. Most are still doing so. Stein puts a stop to this. He has two batteries; he alternates them, forward and rear, keeping one up front with the tanks, firing over open sights if necessary, the outfit so far forward that at times they’re actually out front of the armour. He drills his gun crews to “set up, sight up, light up”—then fall back to a new position and do it again. Stein recruits OPs—forward observers—from displaced infantry, ambulatory wounded and from “B” echelon troopers whose trucks have broken down or been shot up, giving them patched-together wirelesses and salvaged Bren carriers or Morris pickups and teaching them how to call in fire orders. He keeps his object simple: “Make life bloody for Rommel’s 88s.”
    We have an officer like him in our own regiment. This is Major Mike Mallory, second in command under Colonel L., whom I ran into on the Sollum serpentine. Mallory had been a theatrical producer in London (he had had a hit with Irene Cawley in
Her Sweet Fancy
just before the war). Whether this background in some way prepares Mallory for command, no one can say. We know this, though: L. will not get us out of this fix. Impelled by instinct for survival, the junior officers rally to Mallory. We listen to him. We do what he says. He becomes de